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IainB: What I thought was funny about it was the psychological conflict he would have had. Here's a person who can't deny that something he doesn't believe in has happened. He's been bitten by God, so to speak. Your jokes are better than the ones I've seen online on the subject, though. I'll keep them.

...Your jokes are better than the ones I've seen online on the subject, though. I'll keep them.

Glad you like them. They are not really "my jokes", I just collect jokes that I hear, read about, or that people send me. I am an information packrat. I have several thousand jokes in the database. I can sort/filter them by various keywords or subjects - e.g., puns, weddings, Jewish jokes.I started collecting/memorising jokes at age 11. I find that what makes a joke funny is a fascinating subject, and I am always impressed when watching/hearing a skilled standup comedian at work. Most of my favourite jokes are pretty much committed to memory (eidetic), though I have not put the time into ensuring that all of them are in the database.

By the way, Nosh made a good joke (above) but has deleted it for some reason. I had seen it before, but it was not in my database (it is now!).

...Here's a person who can't deny that something he doesn't believe in has happened. He's been bitten by God, so to speak.

Yes, it's quite funny, but it has been sorta true in at least one case I know of - C.S.Lewis - except that he wasn't a dyslexic insomniac as far as I know.He was a hardened atheist and ended up reasoning himself into becoming a devout Christian, against his own wishes!He described his struggle in Surprised by Joy:

Quote

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

@Renagade: Sheesh! That picture of those ruddy Martian protesters - they're at itagain!

I saw pictures when they protested at previous American (NASA) Mars rover landings with signs that read "YANKS $%^# OFF" or similar, and one when they once mistakenly protested because they thought the rover had been sent by an Islamic-dominated nation, or something.They're a racist/sacrilegious bunch aren't they?

Ahahaha. Funny. Cruelly ridiculing them. However, I learned at school that it was "a troop".I must admit, the collective noun "a parliament of owls" would seem a lot better by comparison (I mean, connotations of wisdom and all).Except it's not true about baboons, apparently - it is troop - and nicely put here:

There comes a time when a nation must stand up and say, "Enough is enough. No more degrading political slurs."

Yes, there is such a thing as a pride of lions and a parliament of owls.

But there is absolutely, categorically no such thing as a "congress" of baboons.

We know this because the website Politifact did the research and found that while a group of baboons can sometimes be called a rumpus, the more accepted term of venery is a troop.

A joke email started it all when the anonymous writer asserted that "congress" is not only the right term for a gathering of baboons, it by extension explains quite a lot about Congress. (Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.)

Politifact smelled a plague of rats. So an essay of journalists there delved into this most important political language issue.

Setting the record straight no doubt came much to the relief of baboons everywhere.

Unlike baboons, the reputation of Congress has never been held in lower regard. At the end of last year, Gallup polled the approval rating for Congress at 11 percent.

Think about it -- 11 percent! Public support for legalized marijuana would poll better than 11 percent. Heck, public support for legalized heroin would do better than that.

Besides, what did baboons do to merit comparison to the U.S. Congress?

When baboons gather, they do so for a purpose and actually get things done. Baboon leaders lead the troop to food, water and the pursuit of baboon happiness.

Can Congress do that? Not lately.

Most days last year, Congress did nothing but sit on its collective haunches. And when it actually did something, it made matters worse and the people far less happy.

The House passes bills the Senate won't move on. And the Senate passes bills that the House won't move on. This is normal "activity" for Congress.

House Speaker John Boehner can't control the more conservative part of his majority. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can't control his own tongue, thus making the men the least effective partnership for the reputation of Congress since Anthony Weiner bought a BlackBerry.

The do-nothing Congress created a supercommittee to do something. It did super nothing. Budgets and other big issues get kicked down the road, 60 days at a time. It's no way to run a country.

It's time for good people to do the right thing and just say no to tarnishing the image of baboons. Baboons are not U.S. senators and representatives. For the sake of future generations of baboons, let's put an end to this unfair linkage.

If we don't, the damage could be immeasurable to baboon culture. For example:

-- An adolescent baboon asks out the good-looking babe-oon in the next tree, only to be taunted as having the social graces and personality of Harry Reid. Would his self-esteem ever recover?

-- A baboon harem harrumphs about their male's flirtatious behavior at the troop holiday party. They tell him they won't be "John Ensigned."

-- Overheard at the morning baboon head-scratching session: "Did you hear about the facial work she had done? It was a disaster." "Was it a Nancy Pelosi disaster or a Shelley Berkley disaster?"

So let's get it straight. It's a troop of baboons, a rhumba of rattlesnakes, a bed of oysters, a bloat of hippopotami and a murder of crows. A gathering of congresscritters is a congress.

The other animals don't want to trade.

Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.

That doesn't alter the status of Senators in the public view though. "By their fruits they be known", etc.I recall that a poll in NZ a while back apparently placed politicians in NZ as a class below the much-despised classes of real estate agents and used-car salesmen...however, I couldn't possibly comment.

I agree against any "congress" of baboons. However, the term is not new; I heard it used maybe five years ago in an episode of Steven Fry's TV-show QI (short for "Quite Interesting") - with so and so many million viewers. With the show being a form of intellectual, did-you-know quiz, (Fry didn't create the questions / answers himself, but was merely hired to do the presentation), it is likely that some of these millions now believe it to be a proper term.